Bashir is trapped inside his own mind.
Ultimately this was a failure of imagination. The possibilities for logical leaps and strange occurrences in dreams should provide for great potential. But other than a couple of hard cuts this episode does nearly none of that. The one good idea they try is the ‘crew equals aspects of personality’, but it isn’t written clearly enough, and is frankly abandoned before the final third of the episode.
So we spend a vast amount of time plodding through the setup, only to find that there wasn’t really a ‘there’ to go to from the setup. Disappointing.
361 down, 376 to go.